Category Archives: Name that ferry

We’ll know come Nov. 19 whether a new Bremerton ferry is called
Illahee, the name you chose.
That’s the day the Washington State Transportation Commission is
scheduled to vote on a recommendation from its ferry committee. The
schedule was announced Wednesday. A press release soliciting names
is forthcoming. We already have ours.
Over the past couple months, you sent in dozens of names. We
whittled them to the top three. In final voting, Illahee (179) more
than doubled Suquamish (87) and Radulescu (84), the state trooper
shot to death during a traffic stop near Gorst in 2012.
Illahee means “land,” “country” or “place where one lives” in the
Chinook language. It’s a pretty community and former Mosquito Fleet
stop just north of Bremerton. A nearby state park also bears the
name.
The new Olympic-class ferry wouldn’t be the first to be named
Illahee. One served the state for 59 years before being retired in
2007 because of rust. It was scrapped in 2009.
Getting back to the schedule, name packets are due to the
“Transportation Commission by Sept. 12. The ferry committee will
check that they comply with guidelines and move them to Washington
State Ferries and the Ferry Advisory Committee Executive Council
for review. The two get a month to gather opinions before chiming
in.
“The key thing is that there is public support for the name and
they’ve actually gone out and talked to people about it,” Reema
Griffith, commission executive director, said of the name
sponsors.
The 12,000 members of the commission’s Ferry Riders Opinion
Group will be able to participate in a poll.
The Transportation Commission ferry committee will digest all the
input the week of Nov. 10 and present its recommendation to the
full body Nov. 19.
Seven names were proposed for two ferries in 2012. The commission
chose Tokitae and Samish. The remaining five could be back in the
running this year. They are Ivar Haglund, Cowlitz, Hoquiam,
Muckleshoot and Sammamish.
All that’s left for us is to solicit backing from local, regional
and state bodies and officials. I’d like to include support from
you, even if it’s only a sentence. It’d be cool to send in a
hundred sentences from those who actually selected the name.
It’s been a couple years since the last names were chosen and I
never wondered why. While the state was determining how to pay for
the third ferry, another boat jumped in front of it at Vigor
shipyards, WSF interim director George Capacci told the commission
Wednesday.
“The challenge is we didn’t build three boats,” he said. “We built
one and we built one and we built one. The shipyard took another
project between the second and third vessels.”
Capacci said the Tokitae’s introduction to service June 30 was
seamless, the smoothest he’s been involved with in 20 years.
Commissioners wanted to know about vehicles scraping going to the
upper car deck.
“I can count them on one hand of the thousands of vehicles we’ve
carried over the last two weeks,” he said. “It is not operationally
limiting, but with the electron microscope under which we operate
constantly, it has drawn some attention.”
Money is coming in fine for the new 144-car ferries. A 25-cent
capital surcharge was added to each ticket to pay for bonds to
build the first two boats. The debt payment is about $5 million per
biennium while the surcharge is generating about $7.8 million, WSF
finance director Jean Baker told the commission. The Legislature
passed some fee increases last session to help pay for the third
boat.
Fare revenue in general has been up. During the 2011-13 biennium,
it was $1.2 million over projections. This biennium is looking to
be $1.5 million more.

If you’re just joining us, we figured who better to
name the boat than the people it serves, and decided to coordinate
a community nomination. We’re ahead of schedule. Vigor hasn’t even
started building the 144-car boat yet, and it’ll take a couple of
years after that before it hits the water.

The ferry’s two sisters, Tokitae and Samish, were
named in November 2012. Tokitae is supposed to begin service June
15 on the Mukilteo-Clinton route. Samish will follow in early 2015
in the San Juan Islands. So there’s a lot of lead time.

Washington State Ferries hasn’t told the state
Transportation Commission, which is in charge of naming, when it’ll
need one. The commission requires three or four months to conduct
the selection process, according to Reema Griffith, its executive
director.

Believe it or not, we’ll need some strategy to cut
down the list. All but one of the current 22 ferries have tribal
names. The Transportation Commission’s guidelines state that it
values consistency with existing names. To have any shot to get our
nomination selected, do we need to stick with Indian words or can
we diverge?

We could play it safe by advancing another Indian
name. Ideally, it would have ties to Kitsap since it’ll be based
here. There’s nothing that says the new boat can’t leave Bremerton,
however. The Chetzemoka, named for a Port Townsend-area chief and
meant for the Port Townsend-Coupeville route, now sails off the
south end of Vashon Island. They move around.

A couple of existing names, you probably noticed,
already have Kitsap ties, like Kitsap. It means “brave” or “war
chief” to the Suquamish Tribe. Sealth, or Chief Seattle, was chief
of the tribe. There’s no ferry named Suquamish, though, or
S’Klallam, our other tribe. Another suggestion sent in was Princess
Angeline, Chief Seattle’s eldest daughter. A Mosquito Fleet boat
was named for her, and the name made the Final Four for a new
Kitsap Transit passenger ferry. It would be strange to have a big
Princess Angeline and little Princess Angeline docking in Bremerton
at the same time.

I like Enetai and Illahee, Indian words and place
names that have been ferry names in the past. Enetai means
“across,” “opposite” or “on the other side.” Illahee is “land,”
“country” or “place where one lives.” Both are communities just
north of Bremerton.

Chico also was suggested. The community between
Bremerton and Silverdale was named for a chief who died in 1909 at
the age of 105, according to a place name book. That was old in
those days, and even now, for that matter.

Another one I like, because it’s a cool word and to
mess with the tourists, is Kalaloch. It’s Quinault for “good place
to land.”

Guidelines say names of people should be
avoided but will be considered if the person has been dead at least
10 years. They should have enduring fame or have played a
significant historical role. How about a person who is an
Indian?

There are three other people you submitted — Tony
Radulescu, a state trooper who was shot and killed in 2012 while
making a traffic stop on Highway 16 near Gorst; Dennis Allred, a
Kitsap County sheriff’s deputy who was shot and killed while on
duty on Illahee Road; and Ivar Haglund, a Seattle folk singer and
the founder of Ivar’s seafood chain.

Any person’s name is going to be a risk, according to
the guidelines. And how do you choose between Radulescu and Allred?
Haglund was almost selected the last time around, but there isn’t a
local connection, and I don’t know if it was because people were
being goofy or really wanted a ferry named Ivar.

Griffith of the Transportation Commission said Friday
that the policy is not in stone, it’s just advisory. Ivar probably
would’ve been chosen but the commission was concerned about
promoting a business.

“We don’t want people to think (tribal names) all the
commissioners would ever consider,” she said. “That seems to be the
kind of names that come forward from organizations.”

So there are 10 nominations from our readers:
Suquamish, Angeline, Enetai, Illahee, Chico, S’Klallam, Kalaloch,
Radulescu, Allred and Haglund. If you feel you had a great one that
I cut, make a pitch for it, or for something new. I’m still looking
for something that I see and immediately know, “That’s the one.”
I’ll finalize the list and put it out for vote in a couple of
weeks.

The first batch of potential names for Washington State Ferries’
third 144-car vessel arrived over the weekend.
The boat, which is funded but not yet under construction, is
expected to be assigned to the Bremerton route, so we wanted to get
local folks involved in the naming. The Transportation Commission
is charged with naming ferries, but hasn’t asked the public for
proposals yet.
The 40 nominations that came in were about half serious and half
silly. None knocked my socks off, but it’s not all about me. You’ll
ultimately be the judges.
All but one of the current ferries’ names have tribal connections.
It’s not mandatory, but “consideration will be given to consistency
with existing fleet names,” according to the Transportation
Commission. Several proposals kept to that theme.

TRIBAL NAMES
Palouse (a region in southeast Washington, possibly named for the
Palus tribe)
Suquamish (local tribe and community)
Angeline (Princess Angeline was eldest daughter of Chief Seattle; a
Mosquito Fleet boat took the name)
Nez Perce (Columbia River Plateau tribe)
Enetai (Means “across, on the other side.” Was a ferry on the
Bremerton route from 1941 to 1967; Community between Manette and
Illahee State Park that overlooks ferry route.)
Illahee (Indian word for earth or country. Community and state park
between Silverdale and Bremerton. Puget Sound ferry from 1940 to
2007.

OTHER PLACE NAMES
Manchester (South Kitsap waterfront community named after
Manchester, England)
Blake Island (State park east of the Kitsap mainland once used as a
camping ground by the Suquamish tribe).
Sidney (The original name of the city of Port Orchard, after the
father of the man who platted it; also, the British Columbia town
to which a WSF ferry sails.
Alpental (a German word for alpine valley)

PEOPLE
The guidelines say names of people should be avoided, but will be
considered if the person has been dead for at least 20 years and
has enduring fame or played a significant historical role. Those
parameters would eliminate two of the three below, though I like
the thought.
Tony Radulescu (State Trooper who was shot and killed while on duty
near Gorst on Feb. 23, 2012.)
Billy Frank Jr. (Nisqually tribe member known for his grassroots
campaign for fishing rights who died on May 5.)
Ivar Haglund (Opened the first aquarium in Seattle and built a fish
house empire. Died in 1985.)

Several suggestions had a Seahawk theme, like Seahawks,
Seahawk!, Sea Hawk (twice), 12 and Russell Wilson.

One suggested Resolute after the 1850s British ship that got
stuck in arctic ice.

From this bunch, I think my favorites are Enetai and Trooper
Radulescu. I would keep my “Namu” proposal in the running.

I’d like to mention some of the snide ones, but most aren’t that
funny. Your typical stuff. Ko-min-at-cha isn’t bad.

The next state ferry should be named the MV Namu, in honor of
the killer whale who starred in my 10-year-old summer.
It’s a tribal name, like all but one of the other ferries
(Evergreen State). A sister ship is called Tokitae, which to the
Coast Salish people meant “nice day, pretty colors” but is also the
name of an orca captured at Penn Cove on Whidbey Island. The
Tokitae will start running between Whidbey and Mukilteo next
month.
The third ferry in the class, which Vigor hasn’t started building,
will be assigned to the Bremerton route, so we should name it.
It’ll cruise right past Rich Cove, where Namu stayed.
Namu was caught in June 1965 near the First Nations community of
Namu, British Columbia. Seattle Marine Aquarium owner Ted Griffin
bought him for $8,000 and brought him to Rich Cove, along Beach
Drive. The first Sunday, the 22-foot whale attracted 5,000 people.
By September, more than 120,000 had visited, according to the
Center for Whale Research
(http://www.rockisland.com/~orcasurv/changing.htm). I was one of
them.
Four siblings and I, 2 to 10 years old, piled into a baby blue 1964
Galaxie 500 and sat for hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to see
the killer whale. There was nowhere to get out and watch. You just
stayed in the car, everybody crowding to one side, hoping for a
glimpse.
Namu left for Seattle later that summer and within a year died of a
bacterial infection.
How’s that for a ferry-naming story? If you’ve got a better name,
or story, we want to hear it. The Transportation Commission will be
looking for nominations, and the Kitsap Sun is going to help filter
out the best from this community. We’ll gather nominations from
readers and our staff, narrow the field and put the finalists up
for you guys to vote on. Once a winner is chosen, we’ll submit it
to the Transportation Commission, which will judge it against other
proposals.
There are guidelines. Names should carry statewide significance,
represent the state image and culture, and be consistent with the
existing fleet. They shouldn’t be commercial or honor individuals,
unless the person has been dead at least 20 years, have enduring
fame and played a significant role in the region or state. Last
time I brought this up, many of you suggested the MV Friedrich, but
that’ll have to wait for awhile.
One person — Ivar Haglund — made it into the finals in October
2012, when Tokitae and Samish were chosen. The other candidates
were Cowlitz, Muckleshoot and Sammamish. Seattle Times columnist
Ron Judd, who was nuts when he worked with us at the Sun years ago,
nominated Ivar, the singing fish-and-chips peddler. The other names
all had tribal ties.
You can see what all the other ferries are named here:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Ferries/yourwsf/ourfleet/name.htm. My
favorites are Tokitae and Chetzemoka because they’re fun to say.
I’m not too keen on Samish. They already had Salish. It’s
impossible not to mix them up. I’ve already done that a few times
in my stories, and the Samish isn’t even running yet. Or is it the
Salish?